Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 128, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 November 1903 — WASHINGTON GOSSIP [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WASHINGTON GOSSIP

Since Joseph G. Cannon, who Is to be the next Speaker of the House of Representatives, has leased a house at the

capital, Washington society has been aroused. It is announced that Mr. Cannon will entertain on an elaborate scale and the assumption is that Miss Helen Cannon, his daughter, has much to do with the new order of things. Miss Cannon is recognized as a woman of broad culture and

tact, as well as one of nice judgment. She has seen more of the world than most women in official society, has traveled extensively, and knows mnch of the society of two hemispheres. While she is as democratic as her father and as simple in her likes, preferring gentility to pretension, she has a quiet dignity and the will to assert it. The Cannon house will be a hospitable home, with a flavor of western hospitality and democracy, not unlike the home of the Cannons In Danville, where the social status of men is not measured by money. It will at the same time be the home of the man who ranks next to the President in the political power, and it will be so recognized. '

Important reductions in the total payments for pensions are not to be expected for five years, according to Major Thomhs D. Yeager, acting private secretary to Commissioner of Pensions Ware. The Civil War pension roll, he says, is slowly diminishing, but the total amdumts paid will not be greatly lessened for about five years. This is due to the back pensions, which make np what is lost by the deaths of men already on the rolls. The commissioner estimates that there are at present 200,000 Uniou soldiers who have not applied for pensions, but these men are rapidly making applications, and the amounts paid them are sufficient to hold the pension figures at about the same level. It is estimated that at the end of five years this “unknown army” of men who have not applied for pensions will be about 00,000 strong, and at the end of ten years it will cease to be an appcgciable factor. The end of the decade should see a rapid decrease in total payments, unless new legislation is adopted. The (Grand Army of the Republic has already adopted resolutions calling for an extension of the pension system, and if Congress takes favorable action on the resolution, it will be hard to tell when the total amount for Civil War pensions will decline to any important extent.

President Roosevelt is now 45 years old. Mr. Roosevelt received many reminders of the event. From various parts of the country came letters and telegrams of congratulation. At his forty-fifth birthday President Roosevelt finds himself in perfect health. He has learned how to get through an enormous amount of work with the greatest possible ease. During the first year oi his presidency he expended a good deal of unnecessary vitality upon small matters. Members of his cabinet warned him that this government was too big a machine for any one man to attempt to deal with all its parts and details. For a long time the President insisted on giving his personal attention to routine matters. Now he knows how to pass over administrative details which do not properly belong to his office, and to refer them to his subordinates in the various departments. Mr. Roosevelt is the youngest President the country ever had, and consequently tho only one who ever celebrated bis forty-fifth birthday in the White House.

Sir Hpnry Mortimer Durtfnd has been appointed British ambassador to Washington to succeed the late Sir Michael

Herbert. Sir Henry is at present ambassador to Spain, and formerly was ambassador to Persia. He is 53 years old. He was political secretary to Lord Roberts during the Cabul campaign in 1879, was foreign secretary in India from 1884 to 1894, and wbile holding the latter post ac- ■

companied Lord Dufferui to Mandalay during the Burmese war in 1886, conducted the Thibet frontier negotiations in 1888, and led the British mission to the Ameer of Afghanistan in 1893. He has been nt Madrid two years. Lady Henry is a daughter of the late Capt. Thomas Sandys of the British uavy. As a result of the report of Gen. Bristow, who has been investigating the postoffice scandals, influential heads have been dropping into the basket of late. Four men were dismissed from the government service last week. They are: Michael W. Louis of Ohio, chief of the bureau of supplies, removed for extravagance, wastefulness and favoritism; C. B. Terry of Indiana, clerk in the aame bureau, charged with making false affidavits and attempting to obtain money from clerks for promotion; Louis Kempner of New York, superintendent of the registry system, dismissed for incompetency, negligence, wastefulness and petty smuggling, and Otto Weiss, a clerk in the New York postofflee, for being one of those that levied on clerks seeking promotion. Alaskan legislation will occupy the serious attention of Congress this winter. Hitherto little has been known of that territory or Its needs. Occasionally a few lobbyists representing certain interests would come to Washington and tell conflicting stories, but for the most part it has been neglected entirely. The Senate committee, which went to Alaska this summer brought back a lot of Info *, mutton, and some pretty definite IdeaV about legislation needed, and it la safe to say that some kind of an Alaskan bill be passed. i

MISS H. CANNON.

SIR H. M. DURAND.